The south end of the beach at Hua Hin, Thailand.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Hua Hin, Thailand.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Maldives on March 23rd.

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Planning to get to Germany and our new motorhome

Our new motorhome is located in the town of Dulmen, Germany. It's actually quite close to the Netherlands border. So from here, it is still about 1,000 kms (620 miles) away. There are too many restrictions still involved with flying, but crossing into Germany by land is okay since we are already in the EU and have not been in a "risk" country in the last 10 days.

Our current plan is to take the train to the city of Poznan here in Poland. That gets us a little closer to the German border. From Poznan there are quite a few rideshares available to get us to Berlin. There are some rideshares available directly from Warsaw, but it's an 8 hour drive and the ones that are available seem to leave at odd hours.

From there, we may just rent a car. It will probably be expensive for a one way rental, so we will take that into consideration. We will also look into bus or train there as well, but first we are concentrating on getting into Germany. Fortunately, the dealership where our motorhome is has said they have a small car we can use to do some shopping and running around to get the motorhome set up. They also said we are welcome to stay on the dealership property (and in our motorhome) for as long as it takes to get ready to hit the road.

The route (from right to left) from Warsaw to our motrohome.

Obviously there is a lot of shopping to be done in order to get it set up. Pots and pans, other kitchen accessories, bedding, outdoor table and chairs, cleaning supplies and much more. Registration and insurance need to be looked after. Fortunately, the dealer assists us with this stuff.

So we have an exciting week ahead!

And it begins today. We had a note from Steven and Linda who operate their travel blog at The Chouters. They are an American couple who have been exploring Europe in their motorhome for the past couple of years, and coincidentally they are currently at a campground very close to Warsaw. They invited us over for happy hour today, so we're looking forward to getting together with a couple of like minded travelers. I'm sure we will have a lot to talk about.

Tuesday was another nice day, and we walked over to Łazienki Park, the largest park in Warsaw. As I've mentioned before, Warsaw has a lot of park space and greenery. 

It was a bit of a walk... 6 kms (3.7 miles) one way, but it was a nice day and we took a different route to see some different things. Here are some of the buildings we saw along the way...

Old and new.

Living wall.

Ruth!

The Museum of Life in The Polish People's Republic is located in this building.
So is KFC!

Typical downtown apartment building.

There are some dull buildings as well.

We just happened to walk by the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw.

Łazienki Park used to belong to the Polish Royal Family way back in the 1700's, but it has been a public park since 1918. There are several building in the park that are available for rent for weddings and events. The park also houses several museums.

This is the back side of the Palace on the Isle.

Interesting statues.


We sat in this nice shaded section and had some lunch.

There are lots of these red squirrels.
They have funny tufts of hair above their ears.

The view from where we sat and had lunch.




The palace door knockers.

Gondala ride on the pond.

Myślewicki Palace, originally constructed in 1779.
This mansion largely survived WWII, and U.S. President Richard Nixon stayed here during one visit.

There was nothing explaining this piece!

Scenery along the way.

Ruth on the bridge.

Looking back at the front of the Palace of the Isle.

Pretty duck that we believe is a Mandarin Duck!

The "new" Orangery.

And the "old Orangery.

They were originally built to house and protect orange trees.



Big statue of Chopin.

Composer and Pianist Frederick Chopin was born in a village a few miles outside of Warsaw, so there are many monuments to him. In fact, Warsaw's main airport is named Warsaw Chopin Airport.

We ended up walking 18.2 kms (11.3 miles) and were gone for four and a half hours. I had my cheap shoes on that I had bought in Turkey, and that was the second day in a row. They were fine for one day of long walking, but by the end of the second day my feet were starting to bother me. 

More walking today (with my boots on!) and then we will take an Uber to meet up with Steven and Linda at their campsite.

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18 comments:

  1. My neighbor says to be sure to visit Krakow!

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    1. We will visit Krakow but it won't be on this visit! We will return to Poland again with the motorhome and explore more of the country, just not sure exactly when that will be.

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  2. Wow what a beautiful park!!! I love the cobble stones and old buildings as well as new.

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    1. It is a beautiful park and we enjoyed our time wandering through it. The architecture is amazing. :-)

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  3. Love the red squirrel, we have them here in the UK but they are rare compared to the grey squirrel:(

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    1. We get some red squirrels in Canada too but for us the black squirrel is the common one. I'm not sure if our red squirrels have that cute tuft of hair on their ears though.

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  4. Great blog post. The header picture is a winner.

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    1. Thanks Chris, so glad that you enjoyed the post and the header picture! :-)

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  5. Very keen to read the details of insurance and registration. You wrote months ago about getting a German temporary residency permit; is that still the route you plan to take?

    This is the hurdle I've got to get sorted before following in your footsteps (tire-marks?) in 2022.

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    1. We will be covering all that as we go through the next few days and all the things we need to do to get the motorhome set up.

      At the moment we have put the temporary residency permit on the shelf at least until next year. We don't have enough time to do it now, as we are hoping to get back to Canada in August and then when we return at the end of September we don't want to do it then either as the cold will start setting in and we don't want to hang out in Germany for the cold weather. We think we more or less have our time planned out for the winter so that we can avoid the Schengen Areas and stay within all our time constraints here in Europe and in Turkey.

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    2. Ah, thank you. I had thought that you needed the German residency permit (German address) for insurance and registration, in addition to the wonderful benefit of removing the Schengen Area limitations. Looking forward to your future posts!

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    3. No I don't believe that is necessary but you have to have a German address. We will have more details in our Tuesday post as Monday we will be doing all the required paperwork. Fingers crossed that everything will go as planned. The dealership has worked with other foreigners before so they know what they are doing.

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  6. So glad you are getting together with the Chouters! I was going to send you the link to their blog as I was pretty sure you were nearby. Good luck with your trip into Germany and with getting vaccinated.

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    1. We are glad that we were able to get together to with the Chouters too. We had a great afternoon, we all had lots to talk about and then we ran out of time. It was really nice to meet up with them and we are so happy that they sent us the invite to visit.

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  7. I thought "king chess piece" when I saw Ruth standing next to it.

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    1. Yeah, that could work, lol! I think it looked like an old family shield.

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  8. Really enjoying your pics of Warsaw. Will definitely visit if we ever make it to that part of Europe. Thinking good thoughts on you getting your motorhome soon!

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    1. Thanks Tina, everything went smoothly and we are sitting in Max now, having our first morning drinks. :-)

      Yes, you definitely meed to visit Warsaw if you are ever in this part of the world, we really enjoyed the city.

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